I'm not sure quite how he meant words' 'trajectories between
persons' in history and community. If he meant it in the sense of
their role in interaction, then that is indeed what I would see
as the critical role of their materiality, and I think he also
makes quite clear that we need to look at more than the local
dyadic scale to see this fully. But I would locate their
materiality even more specifically in the materiality of the
processes of interaction in their entirety, of which the semiotic
mediating function of word-use is one important part. It is only
to the extent that we artificially (and in specific cases usually
necessarily rather arbitrarily) isolate language, or other signs,
from the rest of the processes of social activity and interaction
that they can appear to us as purely formal patternings. Words do
not just mediate activity, they are _integral_ to most
activities. Our cultural separation of word from deed is at root
a moral judgment, not an epistemological or metaphysical one.
Formal linguistics, like purely mentalistic psychology, bears
heavy responsibility for a misleading Platonism, which we
generously stigmatize as merely Cartesian.
There is no doubt a useful distinction to be made between
material interactions and formal relations; this division gives
us two handles on every phenomenon. But it is only when we grasp
both of them with an even-handed grip that we avoid spilling half
the contents into the gaps between our discourses.
JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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